The Third Estate Sunday Review focuses on politics and culture. We're an online magazine. We don't play nice and we don't kiss butt. In the words of Tuesday Weld: "I do not ever want to be a huge star. Do you think I want a success? I refused "Bonnie and Clyde" because I was nursing at the time but also because deep down I knew that it was going to be a huge success. The same was true of "Bob and Carol and Fred and Sue" or whatever it was called. It reeked of success."

Sunday, April 05, 2015

But Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Iranian Foreign
Minister Zarif all emphasized a basic truth: the deal’s not done yet,
and while what came out of Lausanne was a better and more complete
framework than many diplomats expected when they went in, nothing has
been signed, sealed and delivered.It will be a miracle, in fact,
if the deal outlined today can be wrapped up by the end of June, the
deadline that’s been announced. Not only are the technical details to be
resolved enormous and complicated, attacks on the whole process are
likely to be relentless.

Obama is not in Kansas anymore, but he does not seem
to know it. Latin America no longer slavishly accepts orders from the
USA; it is no longer the USA’s “back yard”.The mainstream media has downplayed the fact that President Obama has
just declared yet another country an enemy of the USA –one in the
American Hemisphere. He has issued an Executive Order declaring
Venezuela an “extraordinary and unusual threat to the national security of the United States”[i]How a nation that spends less than 1% of its GDP on military
expenditures, has no latest state-of-the-art military weaponry, and an
army of merely 120,000 can possibly threaten the security of the mighty
United States, is entirely incomprehensible.

We watched her speak on the video to get the screen snap. None of us had seen her at that appearance before we streamed it today. We were shocked by how bad she looked and how much make up she was wearing.

Earlier, the Iraqi governor of Saladin left his own province in disgust over the looting spree being carried out allegedly by the Shia militia.Ahmed Abdel-Jabbar al-Karim, chief of Saladin's provincial council, told the Anadolu Agency
late Friday that he along with Governor Raed al-Jabouri left the
province in protest against al-Hashid al-Shaabi's alleged looting and
burning spree in Tikrit.Al-Karim had also blamed the central Iraqi government of not doing
enough to stop the militia's illegal actions. "Governor Raed al-Jabouri
told Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi about the violations and left the
province when no stopped the militia from robbing and burning shops in
Tikrit," he said.

According to al-Karim, the Shia militia also clashed with him and
al-Jabouri when they tried to stop their rampage in central Tikrit. The
militia men allegedly used abusive words, laced with sectarian
references, with the senior Iraqi officials, which then quickly turned
into a physical clash that left several body guards injured.

These acts were not surprising.

Kenneth Roth and Human Rights Watch warned against them ahead of time.

The editorial board of The New York Times also voiced concern.

Warning bells were going off.

Such as last Monday when United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited Baghdad.

Yes, they've already had success with House of Cards and Hemlock Grove -- among others. But the reality is that neither series is particularly visual.

Both are basically radio serials with audio -- that's even more true of Orange Is The New Black.

You get talking heads shots, you get post card scenery, you just don't get a sense of what the camera can do.

In fairness, that's a criticism of many TV shows and Netflix is, more or less, just another TV network these days.

With Marvel's Daredevil, Netflix is set to become something a great deal more.

The character Matt Murdoch explains, "When I was a kid, I used to dream what it would be like to live somewhere far away from Hell's Kitchen. But I realized the city was a part of me, it was in my blood."

And the city is very much a part of Daredevil -- so much so that it's basically a member of the cast.

If the late film director Robert Altman had tackled the super hero genre, it might look something like this show as Hell's Kitchen provides both mood and tension to the proceedings. (Phil Abraham directs the first two episodes and deserves huge credit not only for those two but for the visualization he developed that is carried on throughout the next eleven episodes.)

Over on ABC, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. exists in some land but you're never really sure where that is. Some might argue that's due to the traveling on the spy agency jet but the reality is that the series' struggle for an identity has a great deal to do with the reality to root it in a location. By contrast, Fox's Gotham succeeds largely due to its look only (Jada Pinkett-Smith's the only actor consistently delivering a performance).

On Netflix, Charlie Cox is playing the lead role. The blind hero in the red leather was last played by Ben Affleck in the 2003 film that just squeaked over the $100 million box office line in North America. The series doesn't pick up from there. It gives you the origin story but mainly takes place in the time frame after 2012's film Marvel The Avengers.

Cox follows in the footsteps of Andrew Garfield, Henry Cavill, Christian Bale and Gale Gadot -- non-American actors who have been cast to play superheroes from American comics which may cause some to grimace and carp but he really does deliver in the title role.

He uses a speaking manner similar to Affleck's Daredevil but otherwise makes the role all his own and he's surprisingly effective and moves quickly to the mature hero. That's no minor accomplishment. Seventeen episodes into The Flash, Grant Gustin's still acting as though he's playing a wide-eyed Wonder Twin and not Barry Allen.

Daredevil also benefits from a strong cast -- an amazing turn by Rosario Dawson, the always amazing Vincent D'Onofrio, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Wai Ching Ho and Scott Glenn. The entire cast does outstanding work but those actors especially have to be noted.

Daredevil is the show you've been waiting for. The action series about a superhero that's not all starts and stops (the flashbacks on Arrow have been a joke). The action series that is less like The Flash and more like Nikita in that they know how to stage action scenes and how to shoot them.

On April 10th, Netflix changes everything forever. In 13 episodes, it's made clear that TV viewers do not have to settle. Daredevil makes all today's superhero shows -- Gotham, Arrow, The Flash, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. -- look like the sub-par crap that they are. In fact, it makes the show's look as behind the times as George Reeves' Adventures of Superman series from the fifties.

By creating textured characters and locating them in an identifiable universe, Marvel's Daredevil makes the super seem real and the scope of imagination limitless.

The reality is that negotiations for a deal were supposed to end on March 31st.

March 31st came and went without a deal.

Red-faced with shame, Barack then ordered US Secretary of State John Kerry to get something, anything they could waive to the press and call a deal.

So Kerry got an outline for a future deal.

And this outline has been passed off ever since as a deal.

We're getting real tired of Antiwar.com.

Justin's in love with Barack, if you missed it.

And Antiwar.com can't stop slobbering over Barack's knob.

Readers of Antiwar.com wrongly are led to believe there's a deal.

At Information Clearing House, Moon of Alabama notes, "The deal is unfinished. The devil is in the details and those
have yet to be agreed upon. The deal will fail when on June 30 those agreements
will turn out to be unachievable."

MoA also ponders whether the actual outcome will be war since Barack has taken to presenting the non-deal as an either/or -- either there is a deal in June or there is war.

US President Barack Obama and National Security Advisor Susan Rice pass the time on Air Force One with a game of charades.

Having read her phrase, Susan Rice tosses aside the strip of paper and grabs her Blackberry as she begins acting out her secret phrase.Barack: Is it a person?Susan: Yes!Barack: And do we hate her?Susan: You know it!Barack: Is it Hillary?Susan: Bingo!

They repeatedly got the name of the star of the film wrong and they finally correct it but don't note that they've corrected it.

For those confused, when you correct something you're supposed include a note about the error corrected.

Now Mary Sue readers -- apparently only semi-smarter than the trash that produces The Mary Sue -- took Leslie Coffin's 'facts' as real and repeatedly called the actress "Tonya Roberts" in their comments.

So now The Mary Sue has left their readers looking like idiots.

But, mainly, they've demonstrated that they have no ethics.

Or smarts.

Because the old version is still available in cache versions and we did our screen cap of it.

So they can lie and pretend that they didn't correct anything but this page will always expose their lie and their lack of ethics.

And if you're looking for another reason to stop visiting The Mary Sue, please note the following.

RAPID CITY, S.D. – In a sweeping victory for Indian families, a
federal court has ordered South Dakota officials to stop violating the
rights of Indian parents and tribes in state child custody proceedings
on several grounds.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit brought by the American Civil
Liberties Union and Rapid City attorney Dana Hanna on behalf of two
South Dakota Indian tribes – the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the Rosebud
Sioux Tribe – and Indian parents who suffered the loss of their children
at the hands of the state.

The lawsuit in part charges that Indian children are being removed
from their homes in hearings that lasted as little as 60 seconds, and
that parents have no chance to present evidence. In a 45-page ruling
issued late yesterday, Chief Judge Jeffrey L. Viken wrote that "Indian
children, parents and tribes deserve better," agreed with all seven of
the ACLU's claims, and ordered the state to:

Require state courts to base their decisions on evidence presented during these hearings.

The court also found that the state violated the Indian Child
Welfare Act (ICWA), a federal law designed to ensure the security and
integrity of Indian tribes and families. The law is intended "to curb
the alarmingly high rate of removal of Indian children from Indian
parents."

"Indian children are being removed from their homes without giving
parents and tribes any valid chance to respond. These reckless practices
have led to enormous suffering BY Indian children and their parents,
and the unnecessary breakup of Indian families. This important ruling
should help keep this from happening in the future," said Stephen Pevar,
an attorney with the ACLU's Racial Justice Program. "We are very
grateful that Judge Viken is putting an end to years of violations of
basic rights."

The defendants are State Judge Jeff Davis, Pennington County
Prosecutor Mark Vargo, State Director of the Department of Social
Services (DSS) Lynne Valenti, and Pennington County DSS employee Luann
Van Hunnik.

"All praise and honor should be given to those tribes and to the
Lakota parents who have fought for the rights of all Indian people in
this historic legal victory," said co-counsel Dana Hanna.

The lawsuit, Oglala Sioux Tribe v. Van Hunnik, was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of South Dakota in Rapid City.

Michigan Greens Support SB 13
to End Straight-Ticket Voting
=============================
The Green Party of Michigan (GPMI) announces its support of Senate
Bill 13 of 2015, which would end the "straight-party" ticket mechanism
so often confused in its application in Michigan.

The bill was introduced January 20 by Marty Knollenberg (R-13,
Troy) and assigned to the Senate Committee on Elections and Government
Reform. Committee chair David Robertson (R-14, Grand Blanc) has not yet
scheduled the bill for a hearing.

GPMI Vice Chair Art Myatt points out, "For years, Michigan has let
voters check a party's 'straight-ticket' box at the top of a
general-election ballot, then split that ticket by voting against
candidates of that party in individual races. But many voters don't
understand this. Worse, some poll workers don't understand it either,
and give voters who ask about it wrong advice.

"That means 'straight-ticket' voting is generally NOT used as
intended. We are better off eliminating it entirely."

This month's issue of Ballot Access News notes that straight-ticket
devices unfairly exclude independent candidates (listed in Michigan as
having "No Party Affiliation"). And they distract voters from ballot
questions and non-partisan races – which in Michigan, officially
includes state Supreme Court justices.

Doug Campbell, the Green Party's first candidate for Governor of
Michigan, sums it up this way: "SB13 will take some of the
decision-making power away from party bosses and return it to the
voters, where it belongs."

• Public financing (and free air time shortly before Election Day) for
all legally qualified candidates, of any party or none.

GPMI elections co-ordinator and 2014 Attorney General candidate
John Anthony La Pietra notes a good companion reform to SB 13: repeal
of language in MCL 168.786 which limits voters to two minutes in the
voting booth, with more time up to poll-workers. “All polling places
should have enough voting stations to give voters all the time they need
to complete their ballots.”

The next statewide membership meeting of GPMI is scheduled for
Saturday, June 6 in Grand Rapids.

The text of SB 13 and other official information can be found at
the Michigan Legislature Website:

GPMI was formed in 1987 to address environmental
issues in Michigan politics. Greens are organized
in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Each
state Green Party sets its own goals and creates its
own structure, but US Greens agree on Ten Key Values:

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About Me

Jim, Dona, Jess, Ty, "Ava" started out this site as five students enrolled in journalism in NY. Now? We're still students. We're in CA. Journalism? The majority scoffs at the notion.
From the start, at the very start, C.I. of The Common Ills has helped with the writing here. C.I.'s part of our core six/gang. (C.I. and Ava write the TV commentaries by themselves.) So that's the six of us. We also credit Dallas as our link locator, soundboard and much more. We try to remember to thank him each week (don't always remember to note it here) but we'll note him in this. So this is a site by the gang/core six: Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I. (of The Common Ills).